Steve Doherty is the 2012 GT Academy US Champion

After seven months, 400,000 competitors, and a six-week television series that captured every challenge and human drama of an intense week of racing boot camp, Steven Doherty of Plainfield, IL defeated the rest of the top 16 to win the coveted title of 2012 GT Academy US Champion.

The 29-year old mechanic actually competed in the first US GT Academy competition in 2011, but during the National Finals he missed the final 16 for Silverstone by just six tenths of a second. So in 2012, Steve came back with a vengeance and trained incredibly hard, both mentally and physically, to be a top contender at Silverstone. In the end, Steve came away victorious in the final “Winner Take All” race — and set an all-time track record amongst all previous GT Academy contestants in the process.

Currently in the UK for his intensive racing training for an international license, Steve and three other GT Academy Champions from Europe will team up in two race-prepared 370Zs to race at the Dubai 24 Hour race in the Middle East on January 10th. We look forward to seeing Steve and the rest of 2012 GT Academy Champions follow the same racing success of Lucas, Jordan, Jann, and Bryan.

Congrats!!! Gran Turismo 5 is my most played game of this generation… can’t get enough. Polyphony Digital needs to do an open map GT spin off like Forza Horizon. With GT’s physics and visuals, it would be amazing… but I’m sure they’re hard at work on GT6 for the PS4.

I agree the name should never be listed in the title, additionally the interest grab before the read more should not have included the name of the winner. You just removed allot of people from the list of potential viewers. Now Nissan the sponsor will have less people seeing their cars, and isn’t that what this is really about?

Congrats to a fellow Illnois homey. Watched one of the episodes on Spike. Even though I’m a HARDCORE GT fan, I’ll try to catch e’m when & however I can. As long as the download speeds aren’t INSANE! Whateva, main. My thanks to Polyphony Digital for the FREE (C7) Corvette Prototype in the last store update. Shocking, an American car and not another Nissan. No dis to the GTR & 370Z but c’mon. How about a Pontiac Trans Am, Shelby GT 500 or Dodge Charger SRT-10. If it’s free it must be good! Viva el Toro the Cat. He will win the PS Battle Royale. Big Daddy & Kraptos aren’t jack!